University of Michigan (University of Michigan, School of Information)

University of Michigan's School of Information and Inter-university Consortium of Political and Social Research (ICPSR) will seek to understand how specific curatorial actions (e.g., cleaning data, standardizing variable names, linking datasets) impact the preservation, accessibility, and usability of digital collections. While there is ample evidence that data curation is critically important, we do not understand how curatorial actions impact the use of digital collections and particularly which actions generate the most benefits. This project will analyze a range of five-years of data at ICPSR and assess stakeholder needs, priorities, and values for data reuse in order to develop and refine curatorial metrics for measuring the impact of curation activities.